El tiempo es terrible!

That's what I heard on Spanish T.V. whilst out visiting Danny out in Huesca. "Tiempo" means "time" but in this context it meant "weather", which explains why I was watching Spanish T.V. in the first place.

In fairness, the Spanish definition of terrible is not quite the same as ours; it didn't rain all the time, it was mostly sunny. But Danny told that the past month has been blue skies non stop, which made me think my trip was badly timed.

We had three days at Los Mallos at Riglos, which are mega conglomerate towers. The climbing style here is interesting - The massive holds look very much detached from the wall, and a bit of rain would wash the place away. So you over grip every hold so that if it were to come loose, you'd probably still hold up in place. Mostly the holds were good, but I remember doing one looser pitch - 20m, one bolt! Very scary stuff. It turned out that I'd actually climbed past a bolt on that bit, which was because of another feature of the style at Riglos - there are too many holds. On that occasion they lead me well off route. But having so many holds, footwork seems to get neglected or harder. A typical route is bulge to ledge to bulge to ledge.... So a lot of the time you can't see your feet, and it seems really clunky climbing. I think I got into it a bit more by the end of the trip in a "I know what's coming here" way.

On rest days we played football in the park. This was pretty good, managing a record 26 header rally and defeating some Spanish 15 year olds easily. Other interesting things were the Easter celebration which looked like the Klu Klux Klan, the egg and potato combination, and learning un poco espanol. For good pics see Danny's Flickr

Back in Scotland and the weather is great, though cloudy today. However, I can't enjoy it in the way I'd like, thanks to a skateboarding accident which I'm still taking pain killers for! I've hurt my thumbs so I can't grip, my elbow so I can't pull and my hip so I can't walk without hobbling. The good weather is passing me by, but hopefully May will work out well and I'll get to my favourite climbing places around here, up north and down south.